“I was told he wanted to have lunch with me – I said okay,” star Jeffrey Donovan told Fancast at a recent ‘Burn Notice’ event at the Paley Center for Media. “I didn’t know he was going to be on the show before I met him. He just wanted to meet me, I was told. He was a friend of one of the producers. He was in town … What I didn’t know was [he was] interested in being on the show. He wanted to meet me first and get to know me. Then when he walked away, he said, ‘I want to be on the show.’”

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In ‘Burn Notice’s’ fourth season, which premieres June 3, Reynolds will play an ex-CIA operative down on his luck since leaving the agency, working as a bartender, and having run afoul of some “Russian guys,” creator Matt Nix told EW.com.

“He is going to bring the coolest persona. He was the most profitable movie maker of the 70s,” Donovan says. “It’s unbelievable. He brings this old spy, old world charm of how things were done in the Cold War. Whereas [my character] Michael is the new wave. So, those two are going to butt heads.”

Reynolds, who lives in Florida where ‘Burn Notice’ is shot, knows the show’s crew. Also, Reynolds made his namesake with action movies, and ‘Burn Notice’ is an action TV show.

“I hesitate to say this because it will lead to a lot of e-mails from agents, but one of the things that really makes a difference is when we know that an actor is aware of the show, watches the show, and kind of gets the show,” Nix says. “It makes a huge difference when somebody comes on, and they know how we talk, what we do, and how it works. We were very aware that he knew the show. He was interested, pending if we had a part for him that he thought was worth doing, we might get him on the show. So we made it our business to read apart for him that [he liked].”